Besides pretty flowers peeking out from the ground and slightly warmer weather, there is another way you can tell that spring is starting to spring: Ramps on restaurant menus. Though we still haven't gotten to the markets early enough to see the wild leeks for ourselves (not surprising since it is still a little too early for local ramps to be showing up) they are starting to sprout up on restaurant menus across town.
Restaurants Are Ramping Up For Spring, But One Chef Refuses To Cook Them
Midweek Special: NYC Restaurant Review Roundup
This week Sam Sifton at the Times re-reviews the new location of Oceana for the paper; it previously received an impressive three stars from Frank Bruni, but the seafood restaurant recently moved from a cozy townhouse space to a big new home on the ground floor of the McGraw Hill building, in the theater district. New York's Adam Platt deems the reboot "a cavernous expense-account joint," and Sifton also downgrades the new Oceana to two stars.
Elderly Lobster Spared by Oceana Restaurant
These are tough times for the high-end dining industry, and the seafood restaurant Oceana could have made a cool $275 just for tossing a septuagenarian lobster into a pot of boiling water. Because lobsters' age can be determined by weight, the Oceana owners believe the 11 pound crustacean, nicknamed "Peter," is approximately 70 years old. This guy was old enough to bite a infantryman's foot at Omaha Beach; does that make him too old to eat?
Midweek Special: NYC Restaurant Review Roundup
This week the Times’s Frank Bruni reminds everyone about Oceana (pictured), that fancy three star “seafood restaurant in Midtown that looks like an ocean liner.” After more than fifteen years in business, he says it’s still “very much worth boarding.” And save room for dessert, which is “splendid.” The frozen banana mousse, “presented with both sticky rice and puffed, caramelized rice, [is] the transmogrification of a bowl of Rice Krispies with bananas into dessert, and it’s killer.”
Chefs Just Ducking Around at the D'Artagnan Duckathlon
The city's top restaurants represented in full force yesterday at D'Artagnan's Fourth Annual Duckathlon, a culinary competition where chefs tackle food-related and often wacky challenges throughout the Chelsea Market and Meatpacking District.

